© DAN PAGE COLLECTION/THEISPOT
Several years ago, a manuscript characterizing a cell line called RGC-5, which was derived from rat retina, came across the desk of Thomas Yorio, then an associate editor at Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS). The line was commonly used in vision research; Yorio had used it in his own work at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, and researchers across the field had by then published more than 200 studies involving the cells. But the authors of the new paper had found that RGC-5 cells were not retinal ganglion cells after all. RGC-5 cells hadn’t even come from a rat.1 Suddenly, all of those published studies were called into question.
“They were the first to bring it to my attention,” says Yorio, ...
